RE: Netroots Nation Study: White Men are "The General Population" of the United States

Dear Friends:

Back in 2007, we had a vigorous debate in the afrosphere over whether it was important or not for Black people to be permitted to participate at white-owned blogs.

We subsequently discovered that when white blogs got together and decided which bloggers would have access to the floor of the Democratic National Convention, the decision was made along the lines of the "State Blogs" organization put together by Markos C. Alberto Moulitsas Zúñiga. All of the blogs included in his "State Blogs" organization were white-owned, so no Black bloggers would have continual "state blog" access to the floor of the Democratic National Convention.

That was an apartheid-like decision that came from the apartheid-like white blogs and was ratified by the DNCC while we were asleep at the wheel, in the mistaken belief that white male machinations would make no difference to us.

Now, they're at it again. A study released at Netroots Nation says, in essence, that white men are "the general population" of the United States, while white women, Blacks and Latinos are, taken together, a curious minority who use technology differently from "the general population" of white men.

Now, many readers will ask what difference it makes that white men are announcing that they are the reference group for what "normal" is, while the majority of the United States, including white women, Blacks and Latinos are anomolous outliers whose incompetent behavior needs to be studied in order to determine what hoops we could jump through in order to be considered worthy of having access to the privileges that white men enjoy.

Social and societal movements start with studies that attempt to characterize facts in a way that suits those who originate or sponsor the studies. These studies, when accepted as fact, get some people and groups moving intellectually, politically and economically in a certain direction, while marginalizing others. Because, as Franz Fanon said, subjugated communities often "internalize" the views and behavior of their oppressors, you even find, as I have, that white women, Blacks and Latinos are willing to submit to the phallacy (pun intended) that white men are "the general population."

I only discovered this bogus assertion of white male superiority in the Netroots Nation study because it was sent to me by a Black woman who hailed it as a new scientific discovery: 'Backward white women and minorities just don't know how to act like white men.'

Soon, you may hear that only bloggers who are using the technology prominent among white men will be permitted to participate in some aspect of Democratic Party news reporting and policy making, just as they decided in the winter of 2007/2008 that only blogs focused on state issues would be allowed continual access to the floor of the Democratic National Convention. Or you may discover that white male bloggers are sharing information in a way that only they have accessed.

If this sounds like a "conspiracy theory" , then just look at the all-white state blog corps that came out of the last conspiracy. Believe it or not, there are people conspiring right now to marginalize you and people like you. Slavery, the Fugitive Slave Act, Jim Crow and the Tuskegee Syphilus experiments may the foremost examples of white male conspiracies that had lasting negative results for Black people.

The Fugitive Slave Act, excerpted below, is an example of a national white conspiracy against Black people in which some whites actually obliged all whites to treat Blacks as chattel:

after arrest of such fugitive, by such marshal or his deputy, or whilst at any time in his custody under the provisions of this act, should such fugitive escape, whether with or without the assent of such marshal or his deputy, such marshal shall be liable, on his official bond, to be prosecuted for the benefit of such claimant, for the full value of the service or labor of said fugitive in the State, Territory, or District whence he escaped:

That's right. If any police official anywhere received a slave and then allowed the slave to escape, intentionally or unintentionally, then that officer was to pay the slave's owner the full value of the slave and the labor that the slave would have provided if he had not been freed!

So, you heard it here first. Markos C. Alberto Moulitsas Zúñiga did not spend two years training at the CIA in Washington to be "a secret agent", only to become a legitimate leftist blogger instead. His skills in misinformation are apparent in the Netroots Nation report that says that white men are "the general population" while white women, Blacks and Latinos, who make up perhaps 68% of America, are NOT part of "the general population." Once you accept that premise, all sorts of political consequences will follow from it.

Assertions such as this will definitely have political repercussions unless we push back against them. We need to let white men know, as we did when we elected President Barack Obama, that white men are NOT, in and of themselves, "the general population" of America and we do NOT measure what is appropriate for everyone by referencing how white men are spending their time.

At the same time, when that minortiy of America that is comprised of white males is using a technology or novelty to their advantage, we may want to see if that technology can be useful for us as well, because sometimes minorities such as white men have an idea from which everyone can benefit.

Francis